What Are Records?

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If you want to feel older, this appeared in newspapers in 1998.note What's a newspaper?

Wayne: How do ya' like that? Your dad's invention is gonna be in the Smithsonian alongside the gramophone! Adam: What's a gramophone? Wayne: An early record player. Adam: What's a record player? Wayne: An early CD player.Note And a CD player is...?

An adult digs up their old record collection out of the attic and their kid asks what they are. The parent nostalgically names all the singers of their day whose works have been put to their vinyl discs. Then the kids says, "No, I mean, what are records?" Followup with the parent saying, "I was going to say these made me feel young again."

A subtrope of Technology Marches On, initially fueled by the novelty of the notion that a format of media could actually become obsolete. It bears mentioning that it started cropping up in fiction before 1990, and the characters unfamiliar with records were full-grown adults, meaning that in its earliest form the trope ran on shameless hyperbole. Even in the 21st century, though, its realism is dubious. Most young people do indeed know what a vinyl record is (from more recent media depictions if nothing else), even if they never listened to or owned one themselves and don't know whether a "seven inch" was an album or a single, or whether 45 rpm came before or after 33 1/3. Modern DJs still use them, for instance, and their appearance in pop culture is almost ubiquitous. They've also been undergoing a resurgence of popularity among audiophiles, hipsters and indie music fans (and even some teenagers), thanks to their retro appeal and their exemption from the abuses of the Loudness War. It remains to be seen if their recent semi-popularity will show up on TV any time soon (in any case, there are quite a few records in the StarCraft series, which takes place in the 26th century), but it's enough to make this a Discredited Trope.

This trope can also be used for 8-track tapes, of course (arguably more understandable, since many people know of 8-track but don't know what the actual cartridge looks like). It likely already applies at least to some degree for both cassette tapes and videocassettes, as both are no longer being made en-masse and generally only appeal to niche markets. Wikipedia reports that whereas 442 million cassette tapes were sold in the U.S. in 1990, by 2016, the number was just 129,000. The last major Hollywood film to be released on VHS, A History of Violence, was in 2006. This trope may eventually apply to CD's, though these still are still released regularly, and the fact that all DVD and Blu-ray players remain backwards-compatible with CD's may be a factor in slowing their demise as opposed to the tape format.

But in the age of legal streaming and downloading of music, movies, video games, and other software, sooner or later the whole notion of going into a store and buying a physical object with stored data may go into the history books (well, the online history files if books are also obsolete due to e-readers). Basically, what Before My Time is to cultural references, this trope is to technology.

Examples:

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Advertising

This 1984 ad for Atari word processor software features a variation of this. Pitchman Alan Alda extols the program's then-astounding features to a little girl, then states, "Atari may make the typewriter obsolete." "What's a typewriter?" the kid asks in response.

In an ad for a contraceptive, a little boy is shown standing on his parents' record collection which he scattered on the floor, and his plastic dinosaur is going round and round on the record player.

In one episode of Cowboy Bebop, Spike and Jet receive a Betamax tape for Faye in the mail. They are initially stumped as to what it is. Even when they are told to find a VCR to play it, they go through the ruins of Tokyo to find the electronics museum and return with one for VHS. It's particularly funny that Ed, who is younger than either Jet or Spike, knew what it was. Then again, Ed is a Gadgeteer Genius and Playful Hacker.

Yuki doesn't know what a radio or Polaroid camera is despite being a high school student old enough to have seen them in their heyday. Her friends know what they are and Yuki isn't the smartest kid on the block anyway.

Played for drama in the anime. Yuki took a picture with Megu-nee and the others however blocked out the memory as Megu-nee died just afterwards. A few weeks later and she doesn't know what a Polaroid camera is anymore.

Comic Books

Scooby-Doo! Team-Up: In "Scooby Doo, When Are You?", a prehistoric Time Machine brings the gang to the Flintstone's time. In some aspects, the stone age is more modern than the gang expected but the record player makes Shaggy comment to Scooby that they must be really prehistoric.

Opus took it to a large extreme, where a person wearing a brown outfit seemed to be completely unfamiliar with what a newspaper was, even when Opus tried explaining what it was three times when selling the Bloom County local newspaper. The guy, when Opus could give the simplest explanation he could give (paper), also mentions that it "feels like kleenex."

Another strip had Binkley asking his father what he meant by "winding" a watch.

Brutus: To put it in terms you'll relate to, it's like an oversized CD! Wilberforce: What's a CD?

This old Peanuts strip would be a Double Subversion of this trope had it existed then. It's from 1953, so records are still quite relevant, the joke is that the song on the record references rocking chairs but Charlie Brown and Patty are in a living room filled with that was at the time modern living room furniture: a butterfly chair, a lounger, and an armless swivel chair. They don't know what a rocking chair is.

A series in Crankshaft revolved around Ed trying to replace his copy of Rhapsody in Blue. The clerk at the store, who is at least in her 20s, had never heard of a record before. This was in 1988.

In Phoebe and Her Unicorn, Marigold (a centuries-old unicorn) offers to take Phoebe (a little girl) to a record store. "What's a record?" In a different strip, Phoebe isn't sure what a "radio" is. Marigold's reaction in both cases: "I'm old."

Fan Works

Inverted in Anthropology. When Lyra is shown some music CDs, she doesn't know what they are, as in Equestria they only have vinyl records. Audrey's father points out how unusual it is for a teenager.

In Honey We Shrunk Ourselves (a straight-to-video sequel to Honey, I Shrunk the Kids), Wayne Szalinski describes the gramophone to his son as "an early record player". He then has to clarify that the record player was "an early CD player".

There's a sort of inversion in Wayne's World 2 (1993): Cassandra predicts a gloomier future for vinyl than what actually happened. She says vinyl will soon stop being manufactured and as a result her band's album will never be issued in the format. Vinyl took a hit in the early 90s, with CDs having overtaken the market share from cassettes, which themselves limped on for a few more years, but she was still off the mark. Her remark about her album might have been less so, however, as it may well not have been issued on vinyl at the time for the reasons stated and may not have enjoyed enough enduring popularity to justify a vinyl run in the future.

Live-Action TV

Tower Prep showed where this trend might be going. When they find a record, CJ and Suki ask what it is. Gabe responds that "it's kind of like a hard copy of a MP3." Never once were CD's mentioned, showing that CD's might quickly become the new records.

In an episode Jill offers the boys "her old 45s" for a party, to which one of them responds; "You're giving us guns?"

In another episode: Brad calls a record player a "machine that plays the black round things that spin", Tim corrects him and later Mark tells Tim that he read about record players in his history class.

Cliff Huxtable in The Cosby Show does a variation on this. Cliff has a huge collection of old jazz records that he keeps in his basement as a form of "offspring repellent". If the kids come down there, he invites them to listen to his jazz records. They always refuse and run away.

Inverted in an episode of House where a man has just awoken from a vegetative state after ten years and asks what an "Ip-odd" is.

Joey in My Two Dads is trying to show the kids at a party thrown for his daughter that he's still cool. He refers to his Beatles album, to which two of the kids at the party reply with "Beatles?" and "Album?" as if they'd never heard either term before. CD's were still freshly popular at the time, not to mention that "album" usually means "collection of songs", and not "vinyl recording." Kids were still calling them "albums" even after CD's became popular. Not to mention that there probably has never been a time since the late 60's that the Beatles weren't considered one of the greatest bands of all time, even by those who have never listened to them. The idea of teenagers in the 80's who had never heard of the Beatles is laughable.

In My Wife and Kids the children are genuinely stunned and amazed that Michael was able to turn on the TV by pressing buttons on it rather than use the remote, even asking how he did it.

In another episode, he explains that "for you young, hip kids", a gramophone was a type of record player, which is like a CD player, which is like an iPod, which, "for you young, extremely hip kids", is kind of like a record player.

Doctor Who pulls it quite often in the new series, as most people born sometime in the '80s or later have little to no frame of reference for Police Boxes (other than from the cultural impact of Doctor Who); improved communications technology, such as personal radios for police officers and the wider availability of home telephones note Not mobile phones, as is sometimes suggested; they were already on their way out when cellphones were still the size of bricks and cost several hundred pounds and the shift away from foot patrols made them largely redundant.

In The Sarah Jane Adventures serial "The Man Who Never Was", Sarah Jane's old editor tells her kids he still uses a typewriter. Sky's response is an innocent "What's a typewriter?" Justified because Sky was born circa 2011 and aged up by phlebotinum.

The week of Valentine's Day in 2012 had an 80s themed week for the UK Deal or No Deal. It featured an interesting twist involving a cassette necklace. According to Noel Edmonds, this could have been a problem to younger viewers who wouldn't know what cassettes were.

In an episode of Veronica Mars that aired in 2006, Veronica expresses surprise that "they still make vinyl". Piz tells her that they still put out dance music on vinyl, but being a record collector, he should know that vinyl was and is more extensive than that. In a previous episode he was seen with a copy of London Calling by The Clash, which he said was unscratched and cost him 99c, which implies it's an original pressing, but the cover is a little too pristine not to be new, which means the writers didn't have an excuse for their ignorance either.

This comes up in the episode "Purple Panther, Part 1" on LazyTown when the kids start a LazyTown Museum. Stingy brings in the mayor's old record player that he found lying around and none of the kids have any idea what it is, asking where you put the CD or connect the USB.

This is starting to be a Running Gag on Revolution, since the younger generation is almost wholly ignorant of pre-Blackout culture. When Miles comments on Jason's "boyband face", Jason asks what a boyband is. Later on in the second season, Charlie is baffled to learn that granola bars were considered food.

In the NCIS episode "Power Down," a blackout forces the team to work with less advanced technology than they're used to. This includes a device called a mimeograph (not stated in dialogue), an old-style photocopier that only Gibbs knows how to use.

An Unbuilt Trope variant: there was a Not the Nine O'Clock News sketch, back in the days when everyone knew what records were, that had the staff in an electronics store laughing at a man who wanted to buy a gramophone.

Brighton: Hey, is it true back then people used to listen to their music on some sort of primitive large black vinyl disc? Fran: Only when we weren't enjoying our favorite pastime, child hurling!

In the Henry Danger episode "Indestructible Henry, Part 1", Ray gives Henry and Charlotte an old VHS to watch, and both of them have no idea how to use it, with Henry thinking that he has to look through the spool latches to view what is on the tape.

Music

Steve Albini, musician and producer (or "recording engineer" as he prefers to be credited, if at all) of many, many obscure and semi-obscure albums, as well as better known albums by Nirvana, PJ Harvey, Bush and Cheap Trick, declared an inversion in the liner notes of the CD version of his own band Big Black's album Songs About Fucking: "The future belongs to analog loyalists. Fuck digital". He later re-iterated his vague, non-committal stance on the issue, releasing two Big Black EPs on a single CD which he titled The Rich Man's 8-Track Tape.

"The Vinyl Countdown" by Relient K is a song lamenting how kids these days don't know what records are. Naturally, it was a vinyl-exclusive single.

Puppet Shows

This is Apollo's reaction in "A Present for Mom" on The Pajanimals when Mr. Happy Birthday offers him a jazz record as a present for the Pajanimals mom's birthday.

Radio

British teens and young adults have rather less excuse to play this trope straight than in most countries. John Peel, The Last DJ on BBC Radio 1note the pop music/"youth"'/Lowest Common Denominator crap station, would frequently bring in and play old vinyl records from his personal collection. "I'm sorry, I seem to have played that at the wrong speed" was one of his many Catch Phrases, although on at least one occasion he played a 33 at 45 by mistake but decided it sounded better that way.

Theater

Invoked in Car Talk: The Musical, in the form of a joke designed to fly right by anyone under 40. A man is lamenting that, at age 45, he's too young to have a heart attack. His boss tells him, "Hey, 45 is the new 78." Anyone in the audience who laughs has gray hair.

Used briefly in the opening monologue of The Drowsy Chaperone, when the Man in the Chair says that when he feels blue, he likes to listen to his records - yes, records.

Video Games

Fallout 3 - Three Dog says "I'm your friendly neighborhood disc jockey. What's a disc? Hell if I know, but I'm gonna keep talking anyway." But Fallout is very Zeerust, so records were not replaced with tapes, CDs, and MP3s, but with giant square cassette tapes the size of 45s.

In Gravity Falls: Legend of the Gnome Gemulets, various NPCs want you to get several of some kind of itemfor them because they lost these things one way or another. Soos lost some floppy discs, and when he asks you to look for them, he explains they're an old form of data storage and that they're really good for keeping things secret since most computers don't have a way to read them any more. Wendy wants cassette tapes that her dad apparently threw out the car window on a road trip, but she doesn't feel the need to explain what they are, though she does make it clear through context (specifically mentioning that her dad "doesn't appreciate good music").

Played straight in an episode of "The Marshmallow Money Show" (a now-defunct online Flash series that was on the old Cartoon Network website), when one character notes that record stores nowadays only sell CDs and tapes, yet are still called "record stores", to which another character quickly responds "What's a record?"

Happens with The Creatures in one of their game nights. While playing a video game version of Family Feud, one of the questions was "Name something someone would plug in." Nova enters "VCR" and is annoyed when he receives zero points for that answer, claiming that people still own VCR's even if they're not popular anymore.

This BuzzFeed video explains the concept of VHS and brick-and-mortar video stores in a way that assumes that today's kids only know about Netflix and other streaming services.

The Spoony Experiment occasionally reviews old computer games, prompting Spoony to explain to the youngsters what floppy disks were.

Kids React To... (and occasionally Teens React) demonstrates this trope with things like the first Gameboy, Walkmans and Typewriters, among other things. This noticeably subverts the trope fairly often, as many of the kids and teens (even as young as 6 years old) recognize the items and their function through Pop Culture Osmosis or having them in their families and just need some coaxing to figure out the details of using them.

A similar situation occurred when Jon went to buy a new wastebasket and tried to pay with cash (he'd cut up all his credit cards after Garfield had abused them one time too many). The clerk had no idea what paper money was... and, as it turns out, no one would accept cash as legal tender (even the police had to take the money to a lab to verify that it was, in fact, money). Blatantly obvious Artistic License – Economics in service of Rule of Funny.

Rugrats averted this, as Chuckie could sometimes be seen playing records (like in "Down the Drain" and "Chuckie's Bachelor Pad"), and Angelica was seen breaking Chuckie's records for kicks in "Give and Take." Then again the series takes place in the early to late 1990s, not too long after records began being displaced.

Inverted by Mayor on The Powerpuff Girls, who tries to play a CD on an old-fashioned record player (and proceeds to mistake the horrible scratching noises that ensue for "techno music").

Played straight in the Arthur episode "Francine Frensky, Superstar". (Note: This was one of the earliest episodes of the show, the first season of a program that is in its nineteenth season as of early 2016 and shows no sign of stopping.) The kids shot blank looks at Mr. Ratburn when he talked about Thomas Edison's invention, the phonograph, and prompted the following exchange:

Ratburn: It was before CDs. It played music, with a needle. Binky: Is that a joke?

This may explain why in the later episode "Popular Girls" (Season 3), during a spring break day camp, one group of Arthur's classmates brings in vintage/antique things, and when Jenna demonstrates a record player, the kids all "Oooh" in awe.

Used liberally in Futurama pretty much anytime old technology is mentioned or found.

Professor Farnsworth: Show us this... "The Wheel".

Not records, but in the same spirit of the trope: An episode of Batman Beyond has Terry going to the home of a Science Fiction writer, and finding a typewriter. He pokes at it and asks, "What is this? Some kind of word processor?"

One episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987) had the Turtles take cover behind a stack of boxes. Raphael looks into the boxes and the following conversation takes place:

Raphael: Donatello, what are these?

Donatello: They're records. They're what people used to listen to before they had compact discs.

Michaelangelo: Whoa! Someone really burned these pizzas!

In Kim Possible, the grandmother gave Kim's younger brothers a collection of vinyl records. This was played with: they knew what the records were, and were excited to receive them.

Both played straight and subverted. In "Quick Shot Ed": The Eds are rummaging through Eddy's attic, Ed finds a 7-inch 45rpm record and says: "I found a doughnut!" Eddy corrects him and says: "That's a record, chowderhead."

Also subverted with Eddy having a turntable in his bedroom and is frequently seen playing records. Then again, this could just as easily be an aversion, as Ed Edd n Eddy isn't really set in a particular time period (it's implied to be in the 2000s but could pass for the 1970s just as easily). Regardless, it's justified by Ed being The DitzCloud Cuckoolander. His knowledge of everything is a bit... off.

In the King of the Hill episode "Just Another Manic-Kahn Day", Bobby and Joseph find a box of Hank's old record albums. Bobby knows what they are but Joseph picks up a record and says: "The computer these things go into must be huge!"

In an episode of The Cleveland Show, Cleveland takes Rallo to a record store ("it's where insufferable people come to find obscure music no one likes") and Rallo asks "where do they keep the MP3s?" Cleveland tells him that records have a warm sound you can't reproduce digitally, then puts on a hissing, skipping record. "Takes me back".

Brian: You know, I wrote a book. Girl: What's that? Brian: It's like a really long magazine. Girl: What? Brian: It's like the internet made out of a tree. Girl: Weird...

Teen Titans Go! has Cyborg tell the other Titans they couldn't program a VCR...and being the Teen Titans, none of the others have any idea what a VCR is. Starfire (being an alien) and Beast Boy (being the youngest) have excuses but Robin at least seems old enough that he should know what they are. Rule of Funny is obviously the reason why.

Lampshaded (like so many other things) in episode "Phineas and Ferb's Clip-Tastic Countdown", when Dr. Doofenshmirtz complains about a Monkeys on a Typewriter joke by pointing out how unlikely it is that any of the kids watching at home will know what a typewriter is.

Also, Linda seems to be the only person in the entire Tri-State Area who remembers analog and disposable still cameras.

From South Park, when Stan is trying to convince the Goth Kids to buy their PlayStation 4 early instead of waiting until they're cheaper:

Stan:Battle lines are being drawn! If you wait it out, but everyone else has already decided to go with XBox, then that will become the standard! The PS4 would be like Betamax was to VHS. Henrietta: What's Betamax? Stan:Exactly!Pete: What's VHS?

Averted on Peppa Pig. When Peppa and her little brother George find a record player in Granny and Grandpa's attic, both seem to immediately recognize it for what it is and Peppa asks them to play the record they found with it.

In an episode of The New Mr. Peabody & Sherman Show, Peabody tries to do a show about his vinyl record collection, but Sherman has no idea what he's talking about and assumed the episode was about world records instead.

In a season 27 episode of The Simpsons, Bart and Lisa find a pile of old cathode tube television sets and say that "they're like TVs, but they seem to go on forever." Ironically, they're like the TV the Simpsons used to have in earlier seasons.

The 6-11 year old KO from OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes runs into a phone booth to make a call. He says "What the heck is this thing?" towards the phone then pulls out his smartphone.

Considering British lawyers can, when pressed, turn to court decisions from the age of Richard I to bolster their case, the judge's actions were very much justified.

At a certain (non-secret) base in the US there is a room that can only be entered by using the phone on the outside of the room to call the people inside of the room to come and open the door. The phone on the outside of the room is a rotary phone and there have been cases where the new, younger people don't know how to operate the phone.

One has to wonder what the purpose of dialing is if you'll only ever use it to call the other side to open the door. Perhaps they installed it before the invention of the spoken passphrase.

It may have been installed back when the only thing the phone company would allow you to attach to their phone lines was one of their telephones. Of which there were two varieties: the kind that hangs on the wall, and the kind that sits on a table. It was a regular phone, connected to the regular phone system, with the extension for calling inside the room written on the phone. The purpose was to tell someone inside the room to look at the security camera then come answer the door.

Double subverted by various toys first revealed in mid-2012. Soundwave's finally a tape player again, but only in the form of a high-end, collector-oriented "Masterpiece" toy — the upcoming kid-oriented Soundwave toy is based on his armored car form from Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.

Double subverted again in 2016: the Titans Return subline is going to feature both Soundwave and his Autobot counterpart Blaster as cassette players... except their minions are reinvented as tablets, of all things.

This video shows the children of a mother who grew up in the '80s attempt to use technology from that era. At one point, they're shown having trouble figuring out how to control games on the Atari 2600 despite it only having a joystick and one button. For contrast, this video shows kids trying out a Commodore 64 with considerably more success and appreciation (once they get past the Loads and Loads of Loading, at least).

There's much anticipation and discussion of this happening with the universal symbol for "Save This File" on computers - the floppy disc, now very nearly obsolete, and likely to be confusing to the next generation in ten years' time unless some alternative is figured out.

Then again, if you take a deep look at human languages, you'll see they're always chock-full of fossilized metaphors: words created at one point as metaphors that aren't recognized as such anymore, because the original meaning either is no longer in use, or stopped being obvious due to sound change or borrowing. If future generations are exposed to the save button and other similar fossilized symbols early in their lives (so they're not expected to figure out what the symbol represents on first use), there's not much of a problem with the symbol not being recognizable as a floppy disk. Or to put it another way, if you tell somebody "this symbol that looks more-or-less like a little blue square means save" they'll probably just be like "okay" and get used to it pretty quickly. Even those who have been using computers since the 80s have just gotten used to it and know perfectly well that it's a floppy disk wouldn't really think about the humor of it until it's pointed out to them because they're simply used to it. Assuming they're not simply hard-wired to pretty much completely ignore it anyway and just hit "Ctrl-S" or "Command-S" or whatever.

In Britain, the warning sign for speed traps is a picture of an antiquated photographic plate camera. Speed cameras being a relatively recent innovation, it seems like a strange glyph to use that would likely confuse people as to what the object actually is.

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